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One's personality is both a composition and reflection, but if I have to choose one of them, I will choose reflection as the "self" is more important to me than "me". One's composition may change, walking across the cultural landscapes and climbing the social ladder but one's self is tied to one's reflections. The fun part is that reflections are not bound to "Time-Space" barriers ( it is not time-space) and respective mental constructs, which have grown so thick over ages, that they had reduced the image of humans to Sisyphus, rolling different sizes of boulders on hills of different heights.… As the name of this Blog indicates, knols are my perspectives on topics of interests, sweet/bitter experiences or just doodling :)

Friday, May 4, 2012

Romantic Rebellion

Today, Yahoo posted an article on its home page about Daniel Suelo who runs a Blog by name of Zero Currency. It is not his Blog but his rebellious life style that reminded of several events. First time, that I read Leo Tolstoy's short story, "How Much Land Does a Man Needs?", it deeply impressed me and I got fond of reading other Russian writers of that time. This short story was a beautiful illustration of what happens when subconscious mind is in driving seat. Well, Although we experience on daily basis the contradictions between different parts of our brains but usually, it is the culture, the ecology of billions of brains around us that help us to come out with sound judgments with not much difficulties and feel as a single person (- a rational person- of course).

Leo Tolstoy; A tragedy hunter

What I find common between the life style of Suelo and writings of the late 19th century Russian writers are Romantic rebellions. Romantic in the sense that they have emerged from their commitments to their concepts of morality. When one is committed to morality and wants to live with it, he finds himself in contradictions with the world one lives in and it usually creates tragedies. If one sees the world through moral point of view then his radars are quick to detect such tragedies with magnified details. Romantic (from sense of Morality) writers are usually "realist" and try to present the naked pictures (The contradictions) of society - The parts that people usually like to cover-

Although, we all know that we all are exposed only to limited information and we are ignorant to a large part but it doesn't make much problem as we live and interact with others but when we intentionally seal ourselves from information -conditioned- then we get a picture of world, that is dark and tragic. Love and Morality are two most romantic ideas that we all love to see but the world around us see them as parts not as whole or end goals. Devotion to these ideas are what I call, "romantic rebellion"...

In a field trip, there were some Kuchis (Afghan nomads) tents. While we were passing them by, our teacher said, "Look, they are also living. Human needs are small but human desires have no ends". That was a moralistic commentary on life but I knew, that it is against human nature. Unconscious Mind is the thickest layer of mind and drive us to break the limits instead of limiting ourselves to the minimal survival. If one is interested that why majority of us do not have the gut to go for romantic rebellion, I refer a short and quick reading, "The brain… it makes you think. Doesn't it?" in which two neuroscientists give their perspectives on who really govern us?

While, it is evident that our unconscious minds are the biggest drive even in our seemingly conscious decisions but it is not just a mind or brain that decides all but it is the interactions of brains that influence most of our behaviors and decisions. I don't need any Neuroscientists/Psychologist/Philosopher tells me, how much the interactions with other brains or minds can shape our behaviors. I already know that a group of men that are conditioned can see the world in so a "nightmare like" perspective that they can deny all realities and not even can go to deny the very existence of others but also the large part of the very texts that they have devoted themselves...

Today's infants are

Tomorrows leaders

The unmatched brutal murders and suicide attacks that students of "Madrassahs ; Religious Schools" have committed for last decade in Af-Pak region is enough evidence for how conditioning of minds can make unconscious mind grow strong enough to overtake the conscious minds and do acts that do not make sense to rest of world but make perfect sense to conditioned minds... Taliban didn't came out of no where but it is the conditioning of hundreds of thousands of minds for last four decades in thousands of Madrassahs that have produced a generation who see the short cut path to paradise by killing non-believers/infidels.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, "The Philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the Philosophy of government in the next"....

If Kuchis can live on minimal things, it is because they have grown up conditioned to that life style. It is not the result of free choice as "romantic rebels" like Sadhus or those who rebel against modern life styles based on their senses of moralities or conscience..

While we see occasionally some are having the guts strong enough to challenge their unconscious minds and society altogether by power of their "moral judgments" and quite naturally we also encounter individuals who have totally given up to their unconscious minds and apparently have subjugated their conscience by their "rationales"... Sometime we see amusing reasoning for it..

The wife of the watchman gets sick and he runs out of money in taking care of her so he goes to owner of the building and asks for a loan amounted 10,000 rupees. The owner replies, "I am more needy than you are. There are thousands of people able to help you with 10,000 rupees but I need tens of millions of rupees to complete 2nd floor of my building. Tell me, how many people are out there who can afford to help me out with tens of millions of rupees?"...

If there are people who rebel to denounce the normal lives altogether is not because normal lives are evil but because they observe the tragedies all around them... that are mostly the results of rationales in favor of instinctual and subconscious drives. While the rest of us have occasional "Yuk moments" to these drives, their strong moral senses make most of the normal looking things appear as Yuks... I see one more aspect to this and that is "romantic rebels" are mostly concerned with personal well beings than to social usefulness.

While "romantic rebels" are amusing and illustrate the subconscious drives, the "conditioned rebels" illustrate what happens when the minds are sealed off of most information and exposed to particulars...